Saturday, March 24, 2012

A Visit to Paris - training with the Yamakasi, classes at the ADD Academy, and a stop by the 2WS Store

Since London is a whole lot closer to Paris than Boston I
decided to take advantage of my proximity to the city of light to spend a few days there before heading to Thailand.

My visit to Paris was pretty productive despite the short duration and I managed to fit in a grueling training session with Chau and some of the other guys at the hill/stairs in Torcy, attend one of the ADD Academy classes being held at Bercy, and spend a fair amount of time at the 2WS boutique near Chatelet. There are a number of new products in the pipeline for the upcoming spring and summer seasons and I got a chance to try them on an give some input into the designs.

One of the new custom-printed t-shirts.

There are new colors available for both pants and tops.

The Takare is now available in "Cherry Red".

If you can recognize the arms, you've spent way too much time with me...

While I was at the store some of the guys showed me a recent “reportage” that
aired on France 3 about the ADD Academy and the classes that it offers in
Paris. It is especially notable because it
was done by a French reporter that actually took the time and effort to try to
get to know what l’art de déplacement/parkour/freerunning actually is, instead
of the usual dismissal that the French media gives to the sport, labeling it as
an activity performed by a bunch of kids from the banlieue that want to be
stuntmen and get on tv (or worse, an illicit activity by bunch of street youth
training how to become acrobatic burglars.)

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Background

I graduated from Davidson College in 2010 and was given an extraordinary opportunity through the Watson Fellowship to travel around the world for a year while studying the discipline of parkour (aka freerunning or l'art du déplacement.)
After completing my Watson year in August 2011, I decided to continue my travels and research to see where they take me.